| US & Canada , Canada , Greece , Italy , Portugal Protests against capitalism, corruption and corporate greed have spread around the world [GALLO/GETTY] The year 2011 witnessed two of the biggest mass movements in recent history - the Arab Awakening and the Occupy Wall Street movement. But while the Arab Awakening cut short the half-life of despotic rulers in the Middle East and North Africa, the Wall Street movement focused less on a leader and more on the global hegemony of multinational corporations and giant banks. The idea to "occupy" Wall Street - the US financial hub located in New York City - was first floated in July 2011 by the people behind Adbusters, a counter-culture magazine based in Vancouver, Canada, who called for peaceful action against corporate influence on democracy. The idea became a trending topic that went viral on Twitter and Facebook , and a buzzword for thousands who took to the streets across the world against what they called unfair wealth distribution and corporate-political nexus. The protests began in September in Zuccotti Park, located in the heart of New York's financial district. Within a month, they had spread to more than 100 cities in the US.

Much of the media initially mocked the Occupy protesters as a collection of kooky characters, anarchists and hippies, with no clear agenda. But as city after city erupted with demonstrations , it became clear that the movement would not be as short-lived as some once thought. Hundreds of people were arrested in New York, Oakland, Washington, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and various other US cities as student groups, trade unions, and women's groups joined the protests. The slogan "we are the 99 per cent" became an anthem for the protesters, as it attacked the root of wealth inequality between what activists said was the wealthiest one per cent and the remaining 99 per cent of the population. Live Box 201110415333680466 Wall Street, the nerve centre of global financial institutions blamed for creating an economic collapse, became an obvious symbol of that target. However, the movement soon morphed into "Occupy Everywhere" as people in more than 1,000 cities in about 100 countries took to the streets demanding better pay, jobs, an end to corruption and greed and above all, better economic conditions.

The global movement has included protests in Tokyo and Melbourne, Frankfurt and Nairobi and several eurozone countries on economic life-support (Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal) also witnessed massive street protests in the wake of hefty austerity measures. Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian-born philosopher, told Al Jazeera in November that "the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over". While the evidence of such a statement may be up for debate, what is clear is that the discontent among thousands of people around the world is unlikely to dissipate in 2012. Source: Al Jazeera ‘We Are the 99 Percent’ Joins the Cultural and Political Lexicon - The New York Times The New York Times U.S. |Camps Are Cleared, but ‘99 Percent’ Still Occupies the Lexicon Search Continue reading the main story Photo A protester in Los Angeles, where the police cleared a park near City Hall early Wednesday. Credit Ted Soqui for The New York Times Most of the biggest Occupy Wall Street camps are gone. But their slogan still stands.

Whatever the long-term effects of the Occupy movement, protesters have succeeded in implanting “We are the 99 percent,” referring to the vast majority of Americans (and its implied opposite, “You are the 1 percent,” referring to the tiny proportion of Americans with a vastly disproportionate share of wealth), into the cultural and political lexicon. First chanted and blogged about in mid-September in New York, the slogan become a national shorthand for the income disparity. Easily grasped in its simplicity and Twitter-friendly in its brevity, the slogan has practically dared listeners to pick a side. “We are getting nothing,” read the Tumblr blog We Are the 99 Percent , which helped popularize the percentages, “while the other 1 percent is getting everything.” Within weeks of the first encampment in Zuccotti Park in New York, politicians seized on the phrase. Democrats in Congress began to invoke the “99 percent” to press for passage of President Obama’s jobs act — but also to pursue action on mine safety, Internet access rules and voter identification laws, among others.

Republicans pushed back, accusing protesters and their supporters of class warfare; Newt Gingrich this week called the “concept of the 99 and the 1” both divisive and “un-American.” Continue reading the main story Perhaps most important for the movement, there was a sevenfold increase in Google searches for the term “99 percent” from September to October and a spike in news articles about income inequality throughout the fall, heaping attention on the issues raised by activists. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “The ‘99 percent,’ and the ‘1 percent,’ too, are part of our vocabulary now,” said Judith Stein, a professor of history at the City University of New York. Soon there were income calculators (“ What Percent Are You? ” asked The Wall Street Journal), music playlists (an album of Woody Guthrie covers, promoted as a “soundtrack for the 99 percent”) and cheap lawn signs.

And, inevitably, there were ads: a storefront near Union Square peddles “Gifts for the 99 percent.” A trailer for a Showtime television series about management consultants, “House of Lies,” describes the lead characters as “the 1 percent sticking it to the 1 percent.” A Craigslist ad for a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn has the come-on “Live Like the 1 Percent!” (in this case, in Boerum Hill). These days, the language of the Occupy movement is being reappropriated in new ways seemingly every day. CBS ran a radio spot last that invited viewers to “occupy your couch.” On Thanksgiving, people joked online about occupying the dinner table. Now, on Facebook, holiday revelers are inviting friends to “1 percent parties.” Photo The slogan was projected on a New York building in November. Credit Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters Slogans have emerged from American protest movements, successful and otherwise, throughout history. The American Revolution furnished the world with “Give me liberty or give me death” and the still-popular “No taxation without representation.” The equal rights movement in the 1960s used the phrase “59 cents” to point out the income disparities between women and men.

The civil rights movement embraced the song “We Shall Overcome” as a slogan. During the Vietnam War, protesters called on politicians to “Bring ‘em Home” and “Stop the Draft.” More recently, supporters of Mr. Obama shouted, “Yes, We Can.” The idea behind the 99 percent catchphrase has its roots in a decade’s worth of reporting about the income gap between the richest Americans and the rest, and more directly in May in a Vanity Fair column by the liberal economist Joseph E. Stiglitz titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” The slogan that resulted in September identified both a target, the “1 percent,” and a theoretical constituency, everyone else. Rhetorically, “it was really clever,” said David S. Meyer, a University of California, Irvine, professor who studies social movements. “Deciding whom to blame is a key task of all politics,” he wrote in his blog about the phrase. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.

Sign Up Privacy Policy “It’s something that kind of puts your opponents on the defensive,” he said in an interview. In some cases, even politicians who have been put on the defensive by the movement have resorted to the same rhetoric. When Philadelphia’s mayor, Michael A. Nutter, announced last week that the protesters there had to make way for a construction project, he emphasized that the project would be “built by the 99 percent, for the 99 percent.” Xeni Jardin, the editor of the influential blog Boing Boing , which has featured the protests every day since they began, praised the slogan for capturing “a mounting sense of unfairness in America” and distilling it “into something very brief.” She also called it “fundamentally unfair,” because within the so-called 99 percent who have slept at occupations across the country, there are many well-to-do college students but just as many, if not more, homeless people. “There are many shades of gray,” she said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But attempts to mock or subvert the slogan seem not to have stuck; as Ms.

Jardin put it, “How do you make fun of numbers?” A Tumblr blog that was set up to compete with We Are the 99 Percent, called We Are the 53% (referring to the estimated percentage of Americans who pay federal income taxes), has not been updated for two weeks. Professor Stein at CUNY believes that the 99 percent rallying cry will have limited effect in the future. “I don’t think a good slogan is enough to revivify a movement or our politics,” she said. But Professor Meyer said the catchphrase was useful in that it gave continuity and coherence to a movement that is losing some of its camps in major cities across the country. “ ‘Occupy’ takes its name from the occupation,” he said. “If Occupy continues without occupations, what provides continuity with those people in Zuccotti Park? The slogan.” The slogan was chanted again early on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles and Philadelphia as police there cleared out the Occupy camp sites in each city.

As they lost physical ground for their local movements, protesters told each other online, “You can’t evict an idea.” A version of this article appears in print on December 1, 2011, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Camps Are Cleared, but ‘99 Percent’ Still Occupies the Lexicon. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Understanding the power of a protest movement | Celebrating Being Zimbabwean Understanding the power of a protest movement Share this on WhatsApp WE seem to be living in a society engulfed in one crisis after another. From the ‘Occupy Movement’ to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, grassroots activism has taken a new dimension that is rising up against political and economic injustices in a world where states can no longer control the dissemination of information. Every successful social change movement in US history has had a key element of grassroot activism from abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, workers, civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, anti-nuclear, Central America solidarity and global justice.

The Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both non-violent and violent), riots and civil wars in the Arab world that began on December 18 2010 in Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution and spread throughout the countries of the Arab League and its surroundings. Major insurgencies in Syria, Libya and Yemen resulted along with civil uprisings in Egypt and Bahrain, large street demonstrations in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and minor protests even in Saudi Arabia. While the wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012, some started to refer to the succeeding and still ongoing large-scale discourse conflicts in the Middle-East and North Africa as the Arab Winter. The Occupy Movement is the international branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement that protests against social and economic inequality around the world, its primary goal being to make the economic and political relations in all societies less vertically hierarchical and more horizontally distributed. Local groups often have different focuses, but among the movement’s prime concerns are how large corporations (and the global financial system) control the world in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority, undermines democracy and is unstable.

The Occupy Movement is partly inspired by the Arab Spring, 2009 Iranian Green Movement and the Spanish Indignants movement in the Iberian Peninsula, the 2009 University of California occupations, as well as the overall global wave of anti-austerity protests. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is the name given to the protest movement that began it all on September 17 2011, at Zuccotti Park, in New York City’s Wall Street financial district, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy Movement. It was inspired by anti-austerity protests in Spain coming from the 15-M movement. The main issues raised by OWS were social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the perceived undue influence of corporations on government – particularly from the financial services sector. The OWS slogan, ‘We are the 99 percent’, refers to income inequality and wealth distribution in the US between the wealthiest one percent and the rest of the population. To achieve their goals, protesters acted on consensus-based decisions made in general assemblies which emphasised direct action over petitioning authorities for redress. The protesters were forced out of Zuccotti Park on November 15 2011.

Protesters turned their focus to occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings, foreclosed homes, college and university campuses. Those protests in America spread across the globe into countries such as, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Republic of Ireland, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland andWales. Black Lives Matter is an activist movement, originating in the African-American community, which campaigns against violence toward black people. Black Lives Matter regularly organises protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality and racial inequality in the US criminal justice system. The movement began in 2013 with the use of the hashtag #Black Lives Matter on social media, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin.

Black Lives Matter became nationally recognised for its street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African Americans; Michael Brown, whose dath sparked protests and unrest in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York City. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began to publicly challenge politicians – including politicians in the 2016 US presidential election – to state their positions on Black Lives Matter issues. The Arab Spring swept changes in the Arab World, the Occupy Movement proved to be equally as powerful and now more and more African-Americans are standing up, from the richest to the poorest, calling for government to treat them equally and fairly. These developments indicate that when people unite under a cause, whether good or bad, they have the potential to bring about change. Share this: Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street Why Wall Street occupied so many minds in 2011 by Jennie Wood The American Gay Rights Movement: A Timeline Occupy Wall Street began on September 17, 2011, as an organized protest in Zuccotti Park, in New York City's financial district. The movement quickly spread to other cities across the U.S., including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Occupy Wall Street defined itself as a group of activists who stand against corporate greed, social inequality, and the enormous gap between the rich and poor. We are the 99%, the Occupy Wall Street protest slogan, referred to the difference between the richest 1% and the rest of the population in the United States. Organizers were inspired by the anti-government uprising in Egypt, the social justice demonstrations in Israel, and the political protests in Spain earlier this year. Time Right for Movement On July 13, 2011, Kalle Lasn, editor of the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, and some colleagues created a new hash tag for Twitter: #OCCUPYWALLSTREET. With growing frustration over a stalled economy in the U.S., Lasn felt the time was right to create a movement. Lasn and his Adbusters comrades also came up with the official date when the occupation would start, the idea of protestors camping out, and an iconic poster to define the movement. The poster showed a ballerina dancing on the back of a bull near Wall Street.

The movement started with a few hundred people sleeping overnight in Zuccotti Park, subsisting on supplies and a steady stream of money donated from individuals and businesses throughout the U.S. In October, a tent called the People's Library sprouted up and offered free internet and more than 5,000 books to protestors. Occupy Wall Street continued to grow throughout the fall. On October 1, more than 700 arrests were made as activists marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. On October 5, thousands of union workers marched with the Occupy Wall Street protestors through New York City's Financial District. On October 15, rallies were staged in 900 cities throughout the world, including Chicago, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Sydney, Hong Kong and many more. Thousands of Occupy Wall Street activists rallied in New York City's Times Square. More than 70 arrests were made in New York City and 175 protestors were arrested in Chicago. Violence Erupts On October 25, police raided and closed the Occupy Oakland encampment in Frank Ogawa Park. While clearing the park, police arrested more than 100 protestors.

Several Occupy Wall Street activists were injured, including Scott Olsen, an Iraqi war veteran. Olsen's skull was fractured when a teargas container reportedly struck him in the head. A week later on November 2, the Port of Oakland was shut down by demonstrators. After a peaceful march in downtown Oakland on November 3, the Occupy Wall Street movement again turned violent when a small group of about 100 demonstrators broke windows, burned garbage, and sprayed graffiti. The same group briefly took over a vacant building that was once home to the Traveler's Aid Society, a non-profit organization that provided services to the local homeless. Police officers warned the group to leave, then fired tear gas and bean bag rounds into the building. Dozens of protesters were arrested. In the days after the violence in Oakland, officials issued several warnings to the protestors to abandon their camp. On November 14th, police officers in riot gear raided the Occupy Oakland encampment and arrested 33 protesters. Public Safety and Health Concerns Officials in other cities started to disband Occupy Wall Street camps citing public safety and health concerns.

During a sweep of Zuccotti Park on November 15, 140 protesters were arrested and the People's Library was closed and most of its books were destroyed. On the same day a judge ruled that the city had the right to enforce the rule against camping in the park. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended clearing the park by saying that health and safety conditions had become intolerable. Sixteen hours after the police sweep, protesters were allowed back in park, but they were not allowed to sleep there overnight. Two days later, hundreds of protestors attempting to prevent traders from getting to Wall Street scuffled with police. At least 50 protestors were arrested. Some traders had difficulty getting to work, but the stock exchange opened for trading on time. Some protestors responded to police shutting down Occupy Wall Street camps by moving to college campuses, including Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and the University of California, Berkeley. On November 21, a video showing two University of California, Davis, police officers using pepper spray at close range on seated, passive protesters went viral. The video led to demands that Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi resign. Katehi did not resign, but she took full responsibility for the incident.

She placed the two police officers and the police chief were put on leave and called for the creation of a task force to review the incident. In late November, while police in cities such as Los Angeles and Philadelphia raided and cleared encampments, offshoots of the Occupy Wall Street movement continued to spread to college campuses where, especially in California, where protestors shifted some of their focus to tuition increases. Occupy One Year Later On September 17, 2012, the one-year anniversary of the first Occupy Wall Street demonstration, 185 arrests were made as protesters attempted to block access to the New York Stock Exchange. On the anniversary, rallies were also held in other parts of New York City and in more than 30 cities around the world. However, for most of 2012, the movement struggled to maintain momentum and receive attention like it did in 2011. For example, Occupy Charlotte and Occupy Tampa demonstrated during the 2012 Democratic and Republican conventions, but received far less media attention than the protests in the fall and winter of 2011. The movement did remain vital throughout 2012 in Oakland, California.

Occupy Oakland started off 2012 with a January protest that turned violent. Over 400 Occupy Oakland members were arrested and three police officers were injured during that protest. Occupy Oakland continued organizing protests throughout 2012, including a large one on May Day. The May Day demonstration was so large that it forced many businesses to close. Even as Occupy Wall Street celebrated its one-year anniversary it was too soon to tell what the long-term effects of the movement would be, but protestors clearly succeeded in raising awareness of social and economic inequality for several weeks. There was an increase in news stories about income inequality and a spike in online searches for terms like 99 percent and one percent throughout the fall of 2011. Even though the largest camps had been closed down by December 2011, Occupy Wall Street protestors still continued online throughout 2012, sending out messages and tweets like "You can't evict and idea." Economics Did you know? Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads - The New York Times The New York Times N.Y.

/ Region |Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads Search Photo The Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park in last weekend's storm. Credit John Minchillo/Associated Press THE signs seemed to point toward the end of Occupy Wall Street . The day after the city stripped the protesters encamped in Lower Manhattan of their generators and fuel, the Northeast was hit with a bone-chilling snowstorm that blanketed their tents and tarps with sleet and ice, and left at least one protester hospitalized for hypothermia. Yet the encampment at Zuccotti Park endured. Seven weeks in, the protest has become a fact of life in New York City, a tourist draw to rival ground zero, and a teachable moment for parents. Its slogan, “We are the 99 percent” is a staple of the popular discourse. More than $500,000 in donations has flowed to the protesters in Lower Manhattan, while labor unions and elected officials have come to their aid. Marches and occupations that have sprung up nationwide have served as a national microphone for the cause. And yet, winter looms and authorities in other cities have been cracking down on encampments, sometimes violently.

The mayor’s patience with the occupation seems to be wearing thin, and local residents have tired of the headaches associated with the protest. An influx of outsiders to the park, meanwhile, has threatened the protesters’ ability to organize. Continue reading the main story More broadly, the protest’s leaderless and nonhierarchical structure raises the question of how effective it can be. The demonstrators have yet to proffer clear demands and have rejected any involvement in electoral politics. And it remains to be seen what will become of the action should they lose their foothold at Zuccotti Park. Advertisement If the question used to be “What do they want?” it has shifted in recent days to “How long will it last?” Trouble in the Camp When protesters first unrolled sleeping bags and blankets in Zuccotti Park on the night of Sept. 17, only a few dozen people spent the night. Now, upward of 200 people — students, veterans, train-hopping travelers — stay overnight in the sprawling encampment of tents and tarps that covers the granite expanse of the park. Sleeping in Zuccotti once was evidence of a deep commitment to Occupy’s politics, but now, some people seem to be there mainly for the donated clothes and free food.

Photo The police presence. Credit Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press A few have gotten into fights or have been accused of assaults, including Tonye Iketubosin, a 26-year-old man from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who frequented the park for about a week and whom the police charged on Wednesday with sexually abusing an 18-year-old woman in a tent there. On Thursday, a Florida man was arrested after being accused of punching a protester in the eye. Many protesters say the lawless visitors constitute a tiny fringe and are not representative of the movement, which, they say, has espoused nonviolence and mutual aid. Some have suggested moving the kitchen area and the comfort station out of the park to discourage freeloaders from congregating there. But there are concerns that even if the criminal and antisocial elements are a small minority, they are becoming visible enough to tarnish the image of the entire group. “We have a serious problem with hangers-on,” said Patrick Bruner, 23, a protester and spokesman. “We’re trying to bring people into the fold instead of willfully excluding them.” The assimilation tactic has only partly worked, as some visitors have resisted inclusion.

Several protesters said they believed that the group could rise to the challenge of keeping the park safe, just as they took it upon themselves to scrub it in mid-October when its owner, Brookfield Office Properties, complained that the area had not been washed in weeks and the city threatened to evict the protesters. But that task has been complicated because Zuccotti Park is obliged through an agreement with the city to remain open 24 hours a day. The protesters can no more forbid certain visitors than the police can ban the protesters. Advertisement Hero Vincent, 21, who is from North Carolina and is a member of the park security team, said he had begun offering a blunt opinion when discussing how to handle such people. Photo MANY VOICES A meeting of the protesters in October. Credit Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times “If you are coming here, contribute something,” he said. “If you want to spread poison, go somewhere else.” Toll on the Neighborhood On Monday, a group of four local government officials sent a letter to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, insisting that he address the rising tensions in Lower Manhattan. Some protesters were still using the streets as toilets, they complained. Drumming was disturbing nearby residents.

Long lines of barricades were making the sidewalks feel as congested as cattle drives. The city should enforce noise and sanitation laws more strictly, the letter said, and take the barricades down. But should it kick the protesters out? Adamantly no. “The quality of life needs to be solved but should not be an excuse by those unsympathetic to the message or the protesters’ First Amendment rights,” one of the letter’s authors, State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, said. That conflicting message mirrors the neighborhood’s deeply mixed feelings about the protest. Community Board 1, which represents the area, recently passed a resolution to support Occupy Wall Street. Loving the protesters and hating the problems that have accompanied them “are not mutually exclusive,” said the community board chairwoman, Julie Menin. “Half the residents are completely out of their minds and need Occupy Wall Street to leave immediately,” said Patricia L. Moore, who lives near Zuccotti Park and also leads the Quality of Life Committee for the community board. “And half are residents who came to the last meeting and said, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood.’ ” Ms.

Moore said that most of the residents’ complaints were less about Occupy Wall Street’s presence than about getting the city to make life better for the protesters and the neighborhood. Photo David Graeber, an anarchist and anthropologist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, is credited with suggesting that “we are the 99 percent” become the movement's slogan. Credit Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times “It’s not about getting them out,” Ms. Moore said of the protesters. “It’s about public officials doing their jobs.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Officials said they were responding. A police spokesman said several summonses had been issued. Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for City Hall, said the city was working closely with the community to address its complaints. On Wednesday, most of the barriers in the area were taken down, though some went back up when it seemed the protesters might march.

As for bathroom access, though the city had long been saying that portable toilets could not be installed on the sidewalks because there was too much foot traffic in the area, Occupy Wall Street announced on Friday that it had reached a deal for 24-hour access to a loading dock in the area where three portable bathrooms would be installed, along with round-the-clock security. Not all residents embrace the protesters. Several people who live nearby and said they supported Occupy’s overall message said they nevertheless believed that the group had overstayed its welcome. But Mark Scherzer, a lawyer who lives and works near the protest site, said Occupy Wall Street had become a scapegoat for broader neighborhood issues. The near-constant drilling of bedrock by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was worse than any drumming, he said, and the need for bathroom facilities had mushroomed before the protesters arrived. “While O.W.S. has brought more people to the neighborhood,” he wrote in response to the officials’ letter, “so has the 9/11 Memorial.

All of them need to use toilets.” ‘We’re All Leaders’ Perhaps most puzzling to outsiders, and maddening for the police and City Hall, has been the protest’s lack of official leaders. Photo Justin Wedes rallied protesters. Credit Alex Fradkin “Leaderless is a funny word; we don’t have leaders, yet we’re all leaders,” said Jackie DiSalvo, who is on the protest’s labor outreach working committee and teaches English at Baruch College. “It doesn’t have a single hierarchical leadership, but there are a lot of people exerting leadership over what’s going on.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The template for Occupy Wall Street was cast in its earliest days, when activists gathered in Lower Manhattan in early August in response to a call from the Canadian magazine Adbusters. At first, the initial meeting was dominated by a traditional protest group, with banners and speeches. But a small group of people broke off and sat in a circle on the grass a short distance away. David Graeber, an anarchist and anthropologist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, was among them. The “horizontals” as Mr. Graeber called them, reject a top-down “vertical” leadership structure.

At that meeting and the subsequent ones, everyone was free to talk, and a facilitator moderated the discussion, a format that has continued for Occupy’s nightly meetings. Decisions required talking until, Mr. Graeber said, a consensus that “most people like and everybody else can live with” was reached. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy As the protest’s numbers swelled, this devotion to ensuring that everyone was heard resulted in unwieldy meetings lasting hours. One night in mid-October, hundreds of people had gathered, trying to agree on whether to buy brewing equipment, coffee and tea. Queries were fired from the crowd: Would it be fair-trade coffee? Could they avoid using disposable cups? How would they chill the milk and cream? An hour later, the same proposal was still being debated. “Can’t we just make a decision?” a young protester whispered to his girlfriend. Recently, the protesters voted to revamp the process: the general assembly would still decide broader issues, but representatives of smaller groups would form a “spokescouncil” to handle day-to-day operations.

The change was voted on last weekend. Some opponents feared that the general assembly would lose power. Others worried that small groups would gain a disproportionate voice. Photo AGENDAS A man burning money. Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times “ Mikhail Bakunin warned us of the hierarchy of bureaucrats,” one participant cautioned the group, citing the 19th-century Russian anarchist. “We really are trying to arrive at a solution right now; otherwise there are endless meetings,” someone replied. A few minutes later, more than 90 percent of the group voted for the new framework. The protesters say the horizontal structure must remain. And far from being weaknesses, they say, their lack of hierarchy and the absence of concrete demands have helped fuel their growth. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It has allowed Occupy Wall Street to pop up in all these different cities where the occupations, the needs and the populations are different,” said Willie Osterweil, 25, one of the protest’s first organizers. Not having leaders has also made the movement difficult for authorities to pin down. When Brookfield Office Properties sent in workers to distribute fliers detailing new rules banning sleeping bags and tents, the protesters folded the fliers into origami.

When the police wanted to communicate their demands, the protesters gave them no face or body to negotiate with. When the police entered the park in the protest’s early days, the protesters followed them with cameras and lights, calling their photographers “the coparazzi.” “The police are absolutely actors in this theater production,” said Justin Wedes, a protester who has worked with the culture-jamming pranksters the Yes Men. “They are onstage with us, and the world is who is watching.” Question of History But will the world continue to pay attention if wintry weather or an influx of outsiders or a city-ordered eviction results in the protesters’ losing Zuccotti Park, their physical and symbolic heart? Photo Patricia L. Moore of Community Board 1 discussed the effect on the neighborhood. Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times Or as Marshall L. Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard, put it, “Is it a moment or is it a movement?” For all the symbolism now attached to it, the park’s selection was almost accidental. Protesters had originally zeroed in on Chase Manhattan Plaza, at the foot of a soaring skyscraper on William Street, for their encampment.

But after discussion of the choice on a listserv, fences suddenly appeared around the space. Zuccotti was one of a few possible locations, selected more or less on the fly on the day the protest began. “We marched up Broadway and held a general assembly there and decided it was nice,” Mr. Osterweil said of the group’s arrival. Some academics say that while the occupation of the park was a good tactic, it is time to move beyond it. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It’s not a tactic that puts any pressure on the 1 percent,” Jeff Goodwin, a sociology professor at New York University, said. “It’s inconceivable that the movement can get what it wants without engaging legislatures.” The protesters have made it clear that they have little interest in electoral politics, though. Several said they became embittered after campaigning and voting for President Obama, only to be repeatedly let down. Mr. Graeber, whose most recent book is “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” an examination of barter systems, is credited with suggesting that “we are the 99 percent” become the rallying cry for the movement.

He described many of the protesters’ view in an e-mail: “Both parties govern in the name of the 1% of Americans who have received pretty much all the proceeds of economic growth, who are the only people completely recovered from the 2008 recession, who control the political system, who control almost all financial wealth.” History has not always been kind to leaderless protests. David S. Meyer, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of California at Irvine, said that in the past, grass-roots groups with similar democratic structures — the movement against nuclear power, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — followed one of two paths. “It falls apart, or it gets seized by disciplined factions from within,” he said. “All made big gains,” he added. “But they couldn’t survive their success.” Yet some grass-roots movements have had potency. Doug McAdam, a sociology professor at Stanford University, noted that most groundswell uprisings did not have an organized central structure, among them the civil rights movement, the modern women’s movement and, more recently, the Tea Party. He said the protest could inspire a more concrete movement.

“Successful movements start out as expressions of anger, and then quickly move beyond that,” he said. “It’s very difficult for opponents to control or repress a movement that has many heads.” The group’s supporters, meanwhile, are waiting for the protesters’ next move — whatever it may be. “We don’t know what we’re supporting yet,” said Ed Ott, former executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “But what I’m learning is that 60-year-olds don’t make revolutions; 20-year-olds do.” Correction: November 13, 2011 Because of an editing error, an article last Sunday about the Occupy Wall Street protests being at a crossroads misstated the surname of a senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard, who commented on the protest. He is Marshall L. Ganz, not Glanz. The article also misstated a topic of debate among protesters. They discussed fair-trade coffee, not “free-trade” coffee. A version of this article appears in print on November 6, 2011, on Page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Protest Reaches a Crossroads.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe The Anatomy of the Occupy Wall Street Movement on Twitter A View from Emerging Technology from the arXiv The Anatomy of the Occupy Wall Street Movement on Twitter A study of the social network behind the Occupy movement shows that the most vocal participants were highly connected before the protests began but have now largely lost interest, say social network researchers July 1, 2013 The Occupy Wall Street movement began in September 2011 as a grass roots protest against the inequality, greed and corruption associated with the financial sector of the economy. The movement adopted the slogan: ”We are the 99%” which refers to the distribution of wealth in the US between the richest 1 per cent and the rest. What was extraordinary about this movement was the speed with which it spread, passing rapidly between communities via social media and Twitter in particular. So an interesting question is how this movement became so big, so quickly and what has happened since to the most active participants. Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Michael Conover and buddies at Indiana University in Bloomington. These guys have studied the flow of information across Twitter related to the Occupy Wall Street movement before and after the protests began.

They’ve also looked at the individuals involved and how their Twitter activity has changed over this time period. Their astonishing conclusion is that despite its fiery birth, the Occupy Wall Street movement has become a damp squib and that the key people behind it have lost interest. Conover and co began by studying the tweets associated with Occupy-related hashtags over a 15-month period starting three months before the protests began. That gave them a corpus of information consisting of more than .8 million tweets from almost half a million separate accounts. They then studied a randomly chosen set of 25,000 of these users to see how their behaviour, and the network of links between them, changed throughout this time. The results make for interesting reading. It turns out that the most vocal participants appeared to be highly connected before the movement began. They also shared a common interest in domestic politics. But while this group became highly vocal during the movement’s peak, their engagement has dropped significantly. As Conover and co put it: “These same users, while highly vocal in the months immediately following the movement’s birth, appear to have lost interest in Occupy-related communication.” In other words, the Occupy Walls Street movement appears to have faded away. A significant problem is how to interpret this result.

On the one hand, it would be easy to conclude that the movement has largely failed with most activists returning to life as it was before. But Conover and co are careful to sidestep this conclusion. “An argument can be made that the movement played a role in increasing the prominence of social and economic inequality in the public discourse,” they say. In any case, it’s unreasonably to expect that the group could have maintained the level of activity that it reached at the peak. What it does show is how powerful the collective voice can become when it triggers the interest of a subset of users who are already connected. That’s a lesson that other activists and those they target should readily embrace. However, Conover and co are critical of the way the movement has died away. In particular, they point to a re-occupation movement which began in May 2012 but after which engagement levels on Twitter returned to close to their previous levels within a week or so. “It is doubtless that supporters may have hoped for a more sustained discourse than is evident from the near-complete abandonment of these once high-profile communication channels,” they conclude.

That seems harsh given that the goal of the movement was not to change the behaviour of the protesters but to change the behaviour of those in position to tackle the inequalities that triggered the movement, such as those in the financial sector and the politicians and regulators who govern them. So an interesting follow up would be to use the same powerful microscope of social behaviour to identify this group, to study their behaviour and to see whether it has changed in a way that correlates to the Occupy Wall Street movement. A difficult challenge but surely one worth pursuing. In the meantime, the Occupy Wall Street movement may just be sleeping. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1306.5474 : The Digital Evolution of Occupy Wall Street. OWS Topics OWS Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is the name given to a protest movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district. The Canadian activist group Adbusters initiated the protest, which subsequently led to Occupy protests and movements around the world. The main issues are social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the perceived undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector.

The OWS slogan, We are the 99%, addresses the growing income inequality and wealth distribution in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. To achieve their goals, protesters act on consensus-based decisions made in general assemblies which emphasize direct action over petitioning authorities for redress. Protesters were forced out of Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. After several unsuccessful attempts to re-occupy the original location, protesters turned their focus to... 10 Protest Movements That Changed America | Special Features | Minyanville's Wall Street 10 Protest Movements That Changed America By Blythe Gillespie Nov 04, 2011 12:40 pm Does the Occupy Movement have legs as a catalyst for long-term political and social change? We compare OWS to the popular campaigns that altered this country's history. Stay Connected The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is in its sixth headline-grabbing week, and despite the early onset of winter, it doesn't seem as if protestors plan to pack up their tents any time soon.

Although many of us are scratching our heads trying to figure out what the protestors' endgame is, according to recent polls Americans have grown increasingly sympathetic toward the movement. Does that mean OWS has legs as a catalyst for long-term political and social change? Taking a look at protest movements that have had a significant impact on America's landscape might help answer that question. A telling indicator -- or omen -- may be how many of these movements, some of which began centuries ago, are still going strong today. 1. The Anti-Tax Movement When: 1765-present The Mission: Establish "fair" taxation In the mid-1700s, the British Empire needed money to pay off its debt. Parliament tried to raise the funds by taxing Americans. Since the right to pay taxes was pretty much the only liberty the colonists enjoyed as British subjects, they organized to protest the unfair picking of their pockets. As successful as the colonists were, it's been more than 235 years since the Boston Tea Party and Americans are still demanding tax reform. While we have representation, the concept of "fair" taxation is subjective and we can't seem to agree on a plan.

On paper we may be "99 percent," but in fact we do not possess that level of solidarity. 2. The American Revolution When: 1775-1783 The Mission: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" The colonists didn't begin the Revolutionary War with independence as their goal; in time, it became clear that was the only option. The march toward it began with a manifesto. The Declaration of Independence wasn't an easy sell. There were British loyalists in the colonies, and not all members of the Second Continental Congress shared the same vision. It took a lot of compromising for the delegates to create a document the 13 colonies would ratify. If they hadn't, we wouldn't have a constitution that makes the other movements on this list possible (by granting us free speech) or necessary (by not granting us equality). 3.

The Abolition Movement When: 1830's-1865 (with the passage of the 13th Amendment) The Mission: To outlaw slavery The federal government took steps in the late 1700s and early 1800s to limit slavery's expansion, but there wasn't a unified movement against its practice until the American Anti-Slavery Society was established in 1833. It was largely a religious and social movement. At the time, even politicians who agreed with abolitionism were afraid to attach themselves to it. It was a politically divisive issue and the country was hanging together by a thread. Abraham Lincoln made his "House Divided" speech in 1858; he didn't issue the Emancipation Proclamation until 1863, two years into his presidency, after it was clear the house had collapsed. On the verge of an election that will decide who resumes or assumes leadership of an increasingly disgruntled country, today's politicians seem similarly hesitant to support OWS. 4.

The States' Rights Movement When: 2008-present The Mission: To challenge the authority of the central government We are in the midst of a modern States' Rights movement. Need proof? Twenty-eight states are challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act . States are passing their own immigration laws. The Supreme Court is now deciding whether states can cut Medicaid services the federal government mandates they provide (because California cut them). Although it's illegal under federal law, 16 states and Washington DC have approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes. In 2010 California tried to legalize marijuana use outright. And states are voting to recognize same-sex marriage even though the federal government doesn't. Clearly, the federal government and we its people are experiencing some differences of opinion. 5. The Women's Rights Movement When:1848-present The Mission: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." ( Equal Rights Amendment ) Women first formally organized in 1848; in 1920 we got the right to vote.

But the Women's Liberation Movement had its biggest impact in the 1960s and '70s, helping to shape legislation like the Civil Rights Act and Affirmative Action. The 2010 Census told us that more women than men in the workforce hold a college degree. Still, a March 2011 government report revealed that women are earning about 75% of what men are. In June, a suit filed by 1.5 million women against Wal-Mart ( WMT ) alleging unfair pay practices was dismissed for not meeting class action standards, but the suit has been refiled. The traditional workplace isn't the only venue where women's fight for equality continues. With only one mainstream female presidential candidate in 2012, we still have a long way to go, baby. 6. The Temperance Movement When: 1851-1933 The Mission: To prohibit the consumption of alcohol The first Prohibition law was put on the books in 1851 by the state of Maine.

When in 1920 the Volstead Act amended the Constitution for the 18th time and ushered in Prohibition, the manufacture and sale of alcohol was already banned in many states. That didn't mean people weren't drinking. People were drinking so much that in 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt traded in the Volstead Act for the Beer and Wine Revenue Act. These days we're experiencing an anti-temperance movement of sorts, too. Proponents of legalizing marijuana point to the failure of the War on Drugs, on which we spend billions of dollars annually. Californians claim making marijuana legal would raise millions of dollars in needed tax revenue ( not so, experts say ) -- an idea they may have recycled from President Roosevelt. 7. The Labor Movement When: 1930s The Mission: Fair workplace practices and protections The Labor movement has seen many waves. The policies that shaped the workplaces we know and sometimes love to hate were largely put in place during the Depression. In 1933, President Roosevelt implemented recovery legislation designed to improve the prospects of workers; the Supreme Court overturned it.

It wasn't until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act created a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week and other familiar practices. The legislation was prompted by protests like the "sit-down" strikes that took place in Flint, Michigan in 1936-37. Thousands of members of the United Auto Workers union showed up for work at General Motors ( GM ) plants then literally sat down on the job. Unions played a vital role in advancing workers' rights during the Depression, but they've taken a beating recently; opinion polls prove it. Still, it's not surprising unions rallied behind OWS. 8. The Civil Rights Movement When: 1955-1968 The Mission: Equal rights for African Americans and the end of segregation In 1954, the Supreme Court decided segregation was unconstitutional. It took bus boycotts, sit-ins and freedom marches to effect real change. It took the leadership of individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy; the bravery of women like Rosa Parks; and the coming together of a nation. In 1963, an estimated 250,000 people joined the March on Washington .

These actions led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , the Voting Rights Act of 1965, affirmative action and other legislation created to ensure racial equality. President Obama said that "education is the civil rights issue of our time." With so much focus on the lack of funding for education programs, the high cost of attending college and student loans jobless graduates can't pay back, maybe education and the wealth gap aren't that far apart. 9. The Anti-War Movement When: 1965-1973 The Mission: To end the Vietnam War and raise the social consciousness All American wars have had their opposition, but none so much as the Vietnam War, a military action begun in 1965 to thwart the spread of communism. At its heart, the movement was about social awareness. It based its ideologies on the Port Huron Statement , written in 1962 by Students for a Democratic Society; it was critical of America in terms of racism, uneven wealth distribution and misuse of natural resources, among other things. The movement staged sit-ins, strikes, protests, and in October 1969, a 500,000-person march on Washington.

When in 1971 the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers , a report that detailed unflattering truths about our involvement in Vietnam, a turning point was reached. President Richard Nixon brought the last soldiers home in 1973. The war was over, but the "hippie" counterculture that grew out of it was here to stay. 10. The Environmental Movement

Question: Which protest movement which began in 2011, had as its slogan 'We are the 99%'?
Answer: OCCUPY